Covid inquiry: 'The way people died — just lock them in a room and hope for the best — is inhumane'
Kieran Brady wholost his father James 'Jimmy' to covid on January 2021 in a nursing home. 'What he was going through I will never get out of my head.' Photo: Patrick Browne
Kieran Brady sat with his father as he died in a nursing home in January 2021 while his mother watching through Whatsapp video urged him repeatedly to "keep holding his hand.”
James Brady, who had dementia, was in a Wexford nursing home since the summer of 2020. Window visits were allowed at first. However, when he caught covid over Christmas, even those were stopped with no visits until shortly before his death.
“He had been locked in that room for 19 days at least on his own, with no conversation, no view of the third-floor window,” Kieran said by the time James died on January 18, 2021.
“What was he thinking of us, did he think we all abandoned him? What he was going through I will never get out of my head.”
He recalled with pain in his voice: “My mother just kept saying to me ‘keep holding his hand’ which I did for the whole day. Every 10 minutes she asked me ‘are you holding his hand?’.”
Only 12 people attended the funeral, although he said in normal times this would have been a massive event.
He said:
The family want to know if their father was seen by a doctor among other questions.
They tried to get medical records through the Freedom of Information process but private nursing homes are not directly included.
He wants to know who oversaw this across all residential centres and why Christmas 2020 was allowed to happen as it did.
“We don’t know anything and it’s been over four years now,” he said. “It’s four years ago and we are still none-the-wiser about the circumstances of my father’s death.”
He added in frustration: “The name of the inquiry keeps changing. It’s a ‘look-back’, an ‘evaluation’ and it’s all about ‘we done well’. They keep promising and kicking it down the road — and still now that’s happening.”
Like other families supported by Care Champions, he has urgent questions.
“It is so important that the government holds an inquiry. They use terms like “avoiding a witch-hunt’ (and I feel) they are using that to dismiss our legitimate concerns,” he said.
"I have absolutely no faith in what's happening now. It's been promised and then just before the election, they announced (it)."
Kieran also called for changes in legislation, saying the inquiry on its own will not bring reform.
He would like to see a scheme similar to the Care Partner programme in Northern Ireland introduced here. This could formalise guidelines around nominating a person to visit and assist vulnerable people in nursing homes, he suggested.
A Cork woman whose mother died alone in hospital in January 2021 has said nothing will change unless the Government listens to bereaved families.
Alice Donovan died from covid in the early hours of January 30, 2021 having been a patient in the Mercy University Hospital since late December 2020.
Her daughter Allison McCarthy battled for two years — including going to the Ombudsman — to find out how she died.
Among the devastating details were Alice made a 999 call to the gardaí from her hospital bed, a call Allison and her sister have listened to since then.
Alice died alone despite the family being told at the time staff were with her, as Allison previously described to the .
“My mother’s last days were horrendous,” she said.
The grieving daughter would like to arrange for a recording of that call to be placed in a covid-19 archive.
She called on people to remember or imagine how awful funerals were during those years. Her mother’s coffin was closed and sometimes she jolts awake now in fear wondering if Alice was even in the coffin.
“They said to us ‘don’t touch the coffin’, and she was locked away in a room,” Allison said.
“I wanted to go and just sit outside the room, but they said no. I asked the funeral home if we could bring her home, they said no.”
Her only reassurance came when a double-rainbow flickered into being over Alice’s grave as they buried her.
Now as they mark the fourth anniversary of her mother’s death, she cannot believe they are still waiting on an inquiry.
“I’m not even sleeping again, I’m awake and it’s on my mind,” she said.
“My mum’s story is horrific but the group I’m involved with — the stories would send the hairs on the back of your neck standing, and that’s from last year only in 2024.”
“Three or four years on and it’s still going on in places. Nothing will be changed and nothing will be learned unless somebody from Government will sit down with us and say ‘right, what can we do’.”
She and all her family dread going to hospital even for the most routine procedures. This is common across other families supported by advocates in Care Champions.
"I was my mam's voice but there were people there who had no-one for them, so we are doing this for them," she said.
Allison wanted to acknowledge that she has spoken with nurses and other health staff who also carry trauma or pain from those years.
“I hate giving out about what happened to my mum because I know some people did good, but nothing has changed,” she said.
“People are still traumatised, and the Government doesn’t care.”
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